I feel so smart now about my sprinklers.
The company that advertised sprinkler blowouts pulled their sign the next day and never got back in touch with me. So, since I didn't really want to blowout my sprinklers anyway -- anticipating it was going to get hot again after one day of deep freeze -- I watched a youtube vid on winterizing one's sprinklers. All the things one does short of blowing them out. So, I turned all the knobs and screws on the backflow device outside, turned another knob in the sprinkler box, and then shut off the water. Plus, I was driving by a Lowes and they had foam tubes to cover exterior pipes. Fit great! Then, per something I'd read before, I put a towel over the backflow device, and covered it with a water resistant jacket. I felt ready for the unusually cold storm and was no longer concerned.
So, the deep freeze came and dropped about four inches of snow, and then the sun came out the next day and it was a fast melt. After a few days of unseasonably warm sunshine, I wanted to water the lawn. So, I watched another youtube vid on turning my sprinklers on -- not quite the reverse of shutting them down -- and -- voila! -- they are now working. So, while everyone else is sitting with dry lawns after the frantic rush to get them blown out last week, I can keep my lawn watered for the next few days. Then, this weekend, I have a neighborhood guy coming to blow them out for the winter.
I'll always need someone to blow out the sprinklers with an air compressor before winter, but now I realize I've been paying somebody forty bucks or so every spring to turn them on, and that's something I can do myself. Except next spring I'm going to need some repairs with heads that aren't working quite right, so there's that.
Still, I feel so competent to have learned something new!
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